Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Search for a cause

I'm excited to see more and more focus on socially-aware businesses. The magazine Fast Company, for example, just published a cover package on Sensible Investing, and the venture-capital community is showing more and more interest in funding socially-conscious enterprises.

But in the midst of the big ideas and new emerging companies, there are also simple things we can all do to give back. One great example of this is GoodSearch.com.

GoodSearch.com is a new search engine that donates ad revenue, about a penny per search, to the charity you designate. Use it just like any search engine, and it’s powered by Yahoo!, so you get the same great results.

Now, a penny per search many not sound like much. But let's say you're a nonprofit, and you can get 500 of your regular donors to use this as their primary search engine. If they average four searches a day, that's $7,300 in a year. Not bad.